A wound dressing is a material applied to a wound or a diseased part of the body, with or without medication, to protect and assist healing. The treatment and the healing of wounds is an art old as humanity. There are, for example, accounts of Egyptians using honey as a dressing for use in wound care management dating back to 3,000 to 2,500 B.C. The techniques and understanding of wound treatment have continued to develop since that time, and in the last decade, the understanding and treatment of wounds has significantly improved due to studies at the molecular level and due to newly developed wound care products. See generally, I. Kelman Cohen, Robert F. Diegelmann, and William J. Lindblad, Wound Healing: Biochemical and Clinical Aspects (1992).
A simplified model of wound healing may involve three basic stages. First, acute inflammatory events occur which limit damage and clear the stage for subsequent repair to take place. Second, formation of fibrovascular granulation tissue and the epithelialization occur. Third, remodeling and maturization of scar tissue occurs. In this process, wound dressings may be an important part of the wound treatment in helping to isolate the wound from the harmful external environment as desired, in performing a hemostasis function, and in helping to prevent wound infection. While a dressing cannot sterilize a wound, it may create a condition for reducing the pathogenic load by preventing overgrowth and colonization or by delivering antimicrobial agents to the wound (See the above-referenced article, Wound Healing: Biochemical and Clinical Aspects).
For certain types of wounds, it is desirable to apply a hydrocolloid, hydrogel, or other tacky wound dressing. The stickiness or tackiness of these types of wound dressings have, however, created problems in packaging the wound dressings. A problem may occur because the tacky or sticky dressing adheres to the packaging and may make removal of the package difficult, and on some occasions, could damage the wound dressing. In addition to being sticky and tacky in and of itself, the process of cutting the sticky material from which the tacky wound dressing is formed may create small sticky particles, which some people in the wound dressing industry refer to as "boogers." One conventional approach to solving the problem of packaging the tacky wound dressing has been to provide a separate tray for holding the wound dressing and then applying the external packaging material around the tray. In packaging some tacky wound dressings, a tray with a lid has been used with the tacky wound dressing sandwiched between the tray and the lid before being packaged.
In using wound dressings as a part of a wound care treatment strategy, it may be desirable in some situations to frequently change the wound dressing. Because of frequent changes of the dressings, it may be desirable to have wound dressings that are both easily administered and inexpensive. In this regard, a number of devices have appeared in the wound dressing art.
Wound dressings known in the art have not, however, provided a wound dressing or dressing delivery system that is sufficiently easy to manufacture so as to provide a relatively inexpensive dressing or delivery system. Furthermore, the wound dressings known in the art have generally been difficult to administer--at least as to wound dressings having a dressing or delivery system involving thin films. While some improvement has been made in the delivery systems for such dressings, there have been shortcomings in the designs. Prior art designs have generally called for complicated manufacturing techniques, or design features that require complicated manufacturing techniques to produce, and have frequently required the use of additional adhesive layers. This latter shortcoming, increases the chance that the health care provider will inadvertently make contact with the additional adhesive layers. Additionally, some research has suggested the importance of oxygen in wound healing, and an additional adhesive layer may adversely affect the oxygen permeability as well as the moisture vapor transmission rate (MVTR) of the film.
Thus, a need has arisen for a wound dressing delivery system that allows easy packaging and that is easily administered to a patient's wound while requiring a minimal number of adhesive layers and being relatively easy and inexpensive to manufacture.